Innovation News

Newark, NJ - Atam Dhawan, NJIT’s vice provost for research, will help lead a federal initiative to map out strategies for better integrating point-of-care technologies (POC) such as heart monitors, cancer-testing kits and rehabilitation devices into the healthcare delivery system. The push to develop a plan for implementing these technologies is in response to the Obama administration’s call to advance precision medicine, personalized care that takes into account the biological, environmental, and behavioral factors that influence an individual patient’s response to disease and the treatment they receive as a result.

But the effort acquired momentum at a recent conference at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., chaired by Dhawan, that brought together policymakers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, academics and insurers to discuss policy and practice around POC devices and technologies in areas such as cardiovascular disease, genetic testing for cancer and age-related neurological disorders.

A panel from the conference composed of all of the major stakeholders is currently developing a white paper spelling out a plan of action for POCs that will be published sometime next year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and distributed to all NIH institutes. It is expected to discuss ways in which patients, care providers and insurers can collaborate to develop these technologies and to optimize their use. Their efforts are supported by several institutes at NIH.

For the full story: http://www.njit.edu/features/innovations/atam-healthtech-strategy.php